The Oil Drum | A North American Energy Plan for 2030: Hydro-electricity the forgotten renewable energy resource

194 comments on A North American Energy Plan for 2030: Hydro-electricity the forgotten renewable energy resource

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jivefive99 on April 6, 2009 - 11:09am

I ran into this issue trying to add up all the electricity that is produced (immediate and over time) in the U.S. When you get into billions and trillions, you have to be really careful with the comparisons.

If you do it all in petawatts (1 petawatt = 1,000 trillion watts), and not mix watts with watt-hours ...

Big Gav says North America (3 countries) has 4,800 TWh (trillion watt hours) of capacity, or 4.8 petawatt hours.

Gail's charts say the U.S. alone (one country) has 1,000 gigawatts (= billion watts) of capacity which equals 1 terawatt which equals .001 petawatts immediate, for the U.S. alone

Gail's other chart says 4,000 BKh (billion kilowatt hours) which equals 4 trillion watt hours which equals .004 petawatt hours for the U.S. alone

I don't think all these are close to adding up. :)

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Neil1947 on April 6, 2009 - 4:13pm

jivefive,
The number is 4,800 TWh of power(550GWx8760 h ), NOT capacity, which is about 1100GW,(1.1TW) this is because NG capacity is x5 higher than production(22% capacity factor) and hydro (60%capacity factor) and coal(70%capacity factor).
The US only uses about half of capacity on average, Canada and Mexico higher amounts.

That's where the different numbers come in, Gail is showing capacity.

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jivefive99 on April 6, 2009 - 7:25pm

4,800 trillion watt-hours (4.8 petawatt-hours) of electricity used per year in the three countries. 1.1 trillion watts of capacity. Ok. Thanks.

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194 comments on A North American Energy Plan for 2030: Hydro-electricity the forgotten renewable energy resource

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